


Desert Mirages

by helshotashades



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Asian Parenting, Family Reunions (kinda), Fluff, Gen, Mom!China, No Regrets Here, Turkey was born lucky, and Turkey somehow grows from it, but he has all the best intentions, but look where that got him, have fun, i.e. China's a uppity little shit, inspirational speeches and shit, post-fall of the ottoman Empire, slight genderfuck, the rest of his siblings were lucky to be born
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23203996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helshotashades/pseuds/helshotashades
Summary: Sadik is the one who walks into the desert, but Turkey is the one who claws his way out of it.
Relationships: China & Turkey (Hetalia), How is this not a fucking tag, Maybe not - Relationship, hated modernization, hints of Turkey/Greece, like what else do you want in a friendship, maybe onesided, obsessed with food, theyre both old, traded almost exclusively with each other for like a solid half of a century
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	Desert Mirages

Sadik closes his eyes and watches the ruination of his empire. Everything had been so good, so perfect. He’d had everything, wealth, power, something resembling a real family. It was supposed to be forever. 

Now it was dead, and the vultures have come to take their fill. Sadik resolutely doesn’t watch as they pick flesh off his own bones, squabble amongst themselves for the choicest organs. Even Venice came to pull off a scrap. Not that Sadik had expected anything else. 

Instead Sadik stares at the sky, for hours and hours and hours. Nobody comes now to remind him to eat or sleep or drink, because nobody cares enough. Everyone had left him the second that they’d been able, and now it was just him. 

The sky isn’t eternal, but if you stare just long enough, you can convince yourself it is. Sadik snorts, quietly, to himself. He’s even starting to sound like the damn brat. Clearly he’s been here too long. 

Sadik groans as muscles that haven’t moved for what might have been weeks, months, or years tell him that they’re being overexerted. He gets up easily enough, though. He’ll walk another couple of miles to the next inhospitable stretch of land and languish there for a while. 

He walks through streets that used to be his, through cities whose splendor had been stripped from them, past people whose lives and faith have been rudely torn from them. People that used to be his. Sadik can’t even feel the echoes of their suffering anymore, and the resulting numbness scares him more than he’d care to admit. He wanders back into another desert, and vaguely thinks that he’s probably in Misir. 

A hand touches the small of his back. Sadik whips around, expecting the bushy-browed _thing_ that Sadik doesn’t even deign to call a vulture, but it’s not. It’s a short Asian country, because of course it’s a country. Sadik hasn’t ever seen them before, though, and he wonders what the kid’s doing, wandering around these parts. 

“What are ya doing ‘round here?”, he says, his mouth betraying him, raspy and rough from disuse. 

The kid snorts disdainfully, like Sadik is so far beneath him that he doesn’t know why he expected anything more. “You’re an awfully hard man to find, for an Empire, and all.” 

Sadik jolts, but the title warms him to the kid, despite the disdain. “Ain’t an Empire anymore, kid. Go back to whoever owns you now.”, he says. 

The kid’s eyes flicker with something that looks like pity, but in an admirable gesture, they don’t talk down to Sadik. “Nobody owns me. And I’m hardly a kid. Don’t you remember me?” 

No, not really. Sadik’s seen a whole lotta Asian countries, but he would remember if he’d seen this kid before. Sadik opens his mouth to answer, but the kid waves him off. 

“Figures. Last time you saw my face, you were what, a few decades old? Mongolia was such a little shit back then.”, the kid says, and Sadik runs through his memories of that time when he had siblings. It’s funny, because despite how much Sadik wants a real family, he can barely remember his own makeshift one. He remembers learning how to ride and shoot next to a girl Sadik had called Sister, remembers a sad, withdrawn boy constantly in tears, remembers a pack of kids constantly fighting, and a solemn woman with jet-black hair that everyone just called Mama, even though Sister was the one really in charge. 

Sadik can’t remember any of their faces, so he finally settles on, “I don’t think I’ve ever known you.” 

The kid steps into his personal space, now, and before Sadik can push him away, they start humming a tune. It’s a little bit different than how it used to be, keyed to a male voice instead of a child’s voice, and Sadik realizes abruptly that Mama was never a girl. He has the absurd urge to break down in tears in Mama’s arms, but crying was what Jijig Galuu did. Sadik doesn’t even know his real name, just some stupid pun that Mama had found funny, and had stuck to the boy like glue. Still, the disdain he feels for the useless, crying boy is very, very real. 

So he just stands there in silence, lets his Mama hold him and sing to him. Eventually, he stops, and Sadik asks, “Why?” 

It’s a loaded question, but Sadik doesn’t really have the energy to clarify. Why didn’t he ever come visit, why didn’t he keep in touch, why hasn’t Sadik seen him in forever?

Mama sighs. “Mongolia split us apart after that botched assassination, you know that. And by the time I got to see you again, I had to watch you from behind a curtain. You grew up so much stronger than all your siblings, you know.” 

Sadiq realizes this is China he’s talking to, too, and all those weird, intrusive, personal questions the man behind the silk curtain used to ask, all the things that he seemed to know that he shouldn’t have, they all make sense now. 

“I was so happy when you brought along that boy, you know. I’d always wanted grandkids.”, he continues, and Sadik remembers the sweet trade deal he’d walked away with when he’d brought Yakob to the negotiating table to learn, and wondering what had changed. 

“It almost makes up for who you chose to be the dam.” And China had made no secret of his distaste for Hera (and he’d always be Hera to Sadik, not this Ellada bullshit), despite how much the officials themselves had liked him. 

“I suppose you’re all hung up about how he didn’t really love you back now.”, Mama says, and it’s almost cruel. Sadik can feel tears in his eyes, thinking about the raw hatred in Hera’s eyes and the resigned sadness in Yakob’s when they left. 

Mama’s eyes soften, and Sadik can feel his hand stroke his back. “It’s okay. It’s okay. The sooner you get over that boy, the sooner you’ll feel better. And all baby birds have to leave the nest sooner or later. Accept it, and then you can move on.”

Sadik couldn’t stop the childish plea from being pulled from his lips even if he tried. “But it hurts, Mama.”, he cries. 

“I know.”, he says, and Sadik remembers how Britain had carved up China like a particularly juicy lamb leg. “I know. But you’re alive, and that is what really matters. Come on. Get up and fight for your land if you don’t want to disappear.” 

Sadik doesn’t want to fight. He wants to run. He’s never been the one with the disadvantage. Not really. Suicide tactics had been Hera’s thing. “I can’t.”, he says, just a little bit brokenly. He doesn’t expect the sharp slap that leaves his face smarting and red. Mama looks furious.

“I know you think you can’t,” he says, taking a step back, “but you will. You never even tasted hurt, and you going to let little thing like this stop you? Even stupid little goose tough it out, even though he a cheat and a liar. You won’t even try to fight for your people, spineless fool.” 

And that is what drives Sadik to his feet, even as tears fall in earnest, to adopt a fighting stance that he hasn’t used in months at the very least. He throws the first punch, but Mama drops him so easily, it’s not even funny. He goes down, but he drags him along, to grapple on the ground. Sadik loses over and over and over again, and at some point, the losing stops bothering him. He doesn’t care about what bones he’s broken or whether or not he should even be trying to throw punches with his right arm anymore, he’s looking at the scratches and bruises he’s managed to win on Mama. He has a brief moment where he thinks that this is what everyone who’d ever been under him had felt like. 

Mama wipes a trickle of blood off of his mouth, and smiles, a real, genuine smile that warms Turkey inside. “You will be alright.”, he says, but now it sounds like Mama is reassuring himself. He turns around, walks away, but Turkey runs up to him, catching him in a bear hug. 

He stiffens for a minute, but in the end, he melts against Turkey. 

“Okay now, get off me. You stink.”, Mama orders, and Turkey just squeezes him a little bit harder before letting go. He’s letting go of a lot more than just Mama, though.

Sadik had been the one walk into the desert, but Turkey was the one who clawed his way out of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Virtual cookie to whoever guesses who Little Goose is!


End file.
